


All The Lonely Nights in Your Life

by you_cant_eat_books_sweetheart



Series: Solangelo Week 2020 [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, RIORDAN Rick - Works, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Day #2- Infirmary, Day #4- Free Day, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I kind of mixed the two because I got off topic about the infirmary in this, It's very different from what I planned to write, M/M, Not Beta Read, Solangelo Week 2020, We Die Like Men, and cuddle, and save lives, but I like it so here it is, it's more Nico musing about Will's life in the infirmary than about the actual infirmary, they play some Mythomagic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24810037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_cant_eat_books_sweetheart/pseuds/you_cant_eat_books_sweetheart
Summary: Solangelo Week 2020, Day 2: Infirmary and Day 4: Free day.It's late and Will has to tend to a patient in the infirmary, Nico thinks about parts of Will's life and how strong he is. They end up playing Mythomagic at 4am.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Series: Solangelo Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1794532
Comments: 2
Kudos: 70
Collections: Solangelo Week 2020





	All The Lonely Nights in Your Life

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for Solangelo Week 2020, it's not beta read, but I hope you can enjoy it anyway! 
> 
> I understand that mixing day 2 and day 4 is possibly cheating, but I got kind of off topic from what I had originally planned to write about the infirmary and decided to leave it.

In place of a headboard, the space above Nico’s head is filled by a four pane window with the sill full of plants. 

It’s a small collection, a few potted cactuses and succulents, a pair of tiny little trees that had been planted in hopes of making them grow around one another- lovingly named Aziraphale and Crowley by Will, who’d gone so far as to place sunglasses by the one. There’s a little glass bowl full of carefully arranged plants all hanging from a small metal stand with a hook, and on the wall to Nico’s right, two staggered potted plants full of foliage droop down over the side of the bed, the lower one so long that the ends of it brush along the comforter. 

The room isn’t very big, in fact it’s extremely small, “It’s a converted storage closet,” Nico had been told one day. It should probably make him claustrophobic, the fact that there’s so little room that the full sized bed is pushed almost flush against all four walls and that the door had to be reversed so it would swing out into the hall. 

For some reason it doesn’t, maybe it’s the white walls that reflect light and make the room seem bigger, perhaps the plants reminding Nico that living here is possible, perhaps the window above his head brings him comfort, or maybe it’s simply because the space reminds him so much of Will. 

Nico rolls onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. It’s dark, and the moon casts a soft blue and grey hue across the expanse of everything. Above his head, tiny little origami birds hang from strings, silver moonlight reflects off them causing the appearance of soft grey birds hanging by strands of starlight. 

Beyond the birds lay a pale white ceiling, Nico has always thought about painting it, some sort of mural or abstract piece that gives whoever’s in here something to look at when the nights are long. He hasn’t done it yet because he hasn’t quite found any ideas he likes that the Apollo cabin would approve of, plus it’s a big ordeal to take everything out of the room and move it back in. 

For now, little fairy lights line the place where the ceiling and walls meet, little command hooks hold them in place, and the birds are centered and about three fourths of the way up the length of the bed. 

There’s two down-filled comforters on the bed, one plain white and the other white with thin black stripes running horizontally across it. The sheets are the same stark white, but a little marigold yellow tie blanket (currently at the foot of the bed) provides color to the space in addition to the green of the nearby plants. A huge stack of pillows support Nico’s head and neck, each in a uniquely patterned pillowcase in white, black, yellow and green. There’s a few different shapes as well, rectangles, squares, even a long cylindrical shaped pillow decorated in leaves. 

Footsteps can be heard making their way down the laminate floor, the soft shuffling squeak of crocs making their way back to Nico fill the night. 

“Need help?” Nico’s voice is a little thick with sleep, not raspy, but a little deeper than average and he’s placing vowels on the end of his words even in English.

Will shakes his head from outside the door at the foot of the bed as he slips off his crocs, “No, everything’s fine, it was just a nightmare setting the monitor off.”

Nico nods, and they close the door, Will messes around with a control panel next to it, every machine in the infirmary is hooked up to it, so if someone’s struggling in the night it will wake whoever’s in the little room. 

Nico rolls to his right side to face Will’s side of the bed and extends his arm out across the bed. The other makes good use of this, laying down and using Nico’s shoulder as a pillow, yawning all the while.

“Tired?” Nico places a kiss to the crown of his head.

“Sadly, no,” Will does his best to shake his head while laying down, “I’m very much awake now.”

His Texan accent slips through a little bit on the words, and he wraps his arm around Nico’s ribcage pulling him closer as he buries his face into the space between Nico’s neck and shoulder. 

“I’m sorry.”

“S’not your fault, darlin,’” Will hums, “people need me, so here I am.”

It’s true, Will was the best medic- no, best doctor, that camp had seen in years, maybe even the best the camp had ever had. When he’d been claimed, after just a few months there was nothing left for Lee and Micheal to teach Will, and since only the Apollo cabin ever seemed to practice medicine, there had been nobody else for Will to learn from above them. Eventually, after Will became more or less year round, Chiron had taken him on- one of the centaurs first personal students in many, many years. 

He had taught Will all the plants that grew within the protection of Thalia’s tree, and those that lay beyond. The medicines of America, and the plants that remained in ancient Greece, those from Asia, and Africa. What herbs and flowers you mixed to get the results you wanted, the things that saved lifes and those that killed. He taught Will the finer details of things, the way a dryad’s body differed from a humans, and the nuances of healing each gods' children. 

Will had taken lessons away from the rest of camp, in The Big House and the deep parts of the forest where plants grew free and untamed.

He and Chiron didn’t always get along, but there was a mutual agreement of some sort between them, not to talk about it. The closest either came is when talk of Will being too old for camp came up, and Chiron would express sadness at losing such a wonderful healer and Will would give him a casual nod or merely huff in response. 

Will had started to train Austin to fill his shoes in the infirmary, but his skills didn’t come anywhere close to Will’s and it was clear his interest lied in music. However, Austin with his steady hands and predictable nature had been preferred to the jagged edges Kayla provided. 

Will would always shake his head when it was brought up, but when it was just him and Nico he would talk about it; how much Kayla and Austin reminded him of Lee and Micheal, and how he wished they could have all met at some point. The personalities of Kayla and Micheal, jagged and rough but lovable and loyal nonetheless, both quick to draw their bow and slower to talk. Lee and Austin had always been the opposite, well prepared and steady, friendly and often quiet with thought, they always tried to talk before reaching out for a weapon.

“Make Austin take over tomorrow, yeah?” Nico runs his fingers through Will’s hair, “Give yourself a break for a day or two?”

Will hums in some sort of conformation, “We’ll see.”

“Will,” Nico says, admonishing him slightly, “Kayla can handle the cabin for a night or two and Austin will be fine in the infirmary, you need to see how they’ll function when you leave.”

Will buries his face further into Nico, his voice muffled against Nico’s shirt, “Don’ wanna talk ‘bout it right now.”

The Apollo cabin, like the Hermes cabin, had an odd relationship with counselors. They were some of the few cabins that normally had two counselors, Herme’s because they had so many extra kids to take care of, and the Apollo cabin because it was impossible for one person to constantly monitor their cabin and keep watch over the infirmary. 

Somehow, Will had managed. 

When he was first claimed, Lee had kept an eye on the infirmary, patching up injured demigods and magical beings and sending them on their way. Micheal had overseen the Apollo cabin, he was a drill sergeant in some ways, no kids were ever out of line, but he was a fun big brother too. 

Will had come along, at the tiny age of nine, with advanced knowledge of the human body, and fingertips that bled sunlight when he needed to save lives. Within a few months, he’d claimed the title as “Head of the Infirmary and Medical Operations”, no Hippocratic oath, no proper supplies, and very little training- he'd somehow managed to be the best.

Lee took back managing the cabin, and Michael stepped down from his leadership position- he’d never cared for it, and hadn’t even wanted it in the first place. 

Lee’s death had devastated he whole cabin, the Apollo cabin had always been a place full of traditions; they had memorized all the stories of the gods and their children, passed them down perfectly in song and rhyme for generation after generation never writing them down; the Apollo cabin was the only cabin that actually bothered to truly learn Greek. 

With Lee’s death, some stories he hadn’t passed along yet had been lost, and those Michael knew had been left for Will to memorize- and for the first time ever, commit to paper. 

It’s a lot of responsibility for a fourteen year old boy, to write thousands of years of history down for the first time. 

The death of Micheal, and what was pretty much the entire Apollo cabin had hit Will harder than anyone else.

It was hard for the other campers to see a cabin so normally full of life, entirely devoid of people, to see camp sing alongs brought down from a full choir to such a small group; weirdly enough, nobody had ever seemed to think of how much worse it was for the Apollo kids, so normally surrounded by music and chatter trying to sleep peacefully in a now empty cabin. 

The last few left, went home and didn’t come back the next year.

And then it was just Will.

He’d moved into the infirmary, he’d been sleeping in the chair in the office, and alternating between medical cots. Returning to an empty cabin wasn’’t an option for him, so he struck a deal with Chiron for a bed in the infirmary- some bullshit excuse of how the war had made him realize that it was sometimes necessary to monitor patients overnight. 

Chiron and Will didn’t talk about it like most things, Will got his bed in a tiny little storage closet the infirmary didn’t need anymore because he’d figured out a more effective organization method. It didn’t take long for him to start spending every night in the infirmary, even the nights when there were no patients to be found, you could still find Will sound asleep in the infirmary, “Who knows?” he’d tell you, “Someone might need help at night, and I could never forgive myself if they died in the time it took for me to get across camp.”

Eventually, Kayla and Austin showed up- together. 

She’d worked her way down from Quebec with her satyr and a high quality bow, a parting gift from her father. 

On accident, or perhaps on purpose- the fates are rather mysterious- the pair had bumped into Austin when they stayed overnight in Detroit. Extraordinary events lead to extraordinary discoveries, and he tagged along with an instrument case and a backpack full of everything he owned (the foster care system is rarely kind). 

A few weeks after their arrival, both were claimed; Kayla shooting arrows when the sun was being painted on the sky for the day had been claimed in a quiet moment mostly alone when she split an arrow in the target. Austin had improvised some sort of sing along in the Hermes cabin, some sort of Highschool Musical piece that had everyone shouting at the top of their lungs, halfway through an improvised saxophone solo he’d been bathed in his father’s golden light. 

Will tried in the beginning, to move back to the cabin for them, to make their camp experience more normal, to not shift any of his responsibilities on them. He was fifteen and in charge of an entire cabin and the well being of every individual at camp- he couldn’t ever feel good about himself if he passed those responsibilities along to a twelve and ten year old kid. 

So he did his best, tried to be a good enough sibling figure to rival Lee and Micheal despite the pain, and slept in the cabin when it was bearable. He took in the few others that tagged along too, a daughter of Hygia and a son of Enope who he took in while their cabins were being built. 

After a lot of pain, a lot of hard nights, tears shed, and when the feeling of wanting to give up went away, Will felt a little better. Nico came back, they made amends, and now here he was, _here they were._

Trying to sleep in a bed that filled the infirmary’s storage closet, a little too old for their age (or maybe a little young in Nico’s case), but happier than they had been in a long time, and deeply in love. 

So maybe there was no reason to bring it up tonight, there’d been enough lonely nights for the both of them- maybe a change of pace was due. 

“Hey, Will?”

“Hmm?”

“Let’s have a sleepover,” Nico feels like a child sometimes, but Will’s taught him that’s not always a bad thing.

“Tonight?”

“You’re not going to be able to go back to sleep, are you?”

Will lifts his head up to look into Nico’s eyes, he rests his jawline into Nico’s shoulder as he seems to consider, “No, probably not… But Nico?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t we technically have sleepovers every night?” 

Nico feels his cheeks grow hot when Will moves his eyebrows at him, and he grabs a small pillow from next to him and drops it on Will’s face, “It’s not like we normally do anything bad, jerk- I was just thinking you know…”

Nico shrugs hoping the thought gets across, he’s not the best communicator, but he’s gotten better.

Will peels the pillow of his face, and places it back to the other side of the bed, his eyes meet Nico’s and it's obvious he has no clue what Nico is trying to say this time. 

Nico hurts with embarrassment, and decides it's best to rip the bandage quickly, he talks so fast all his words run together and there's no mistaking him for anything other than Italian, “You know? A sleepover with pillow fights, and little games, chitter chatter and poor jokes, like girls have when they're kids? That would be nice, wouldn't it?”

“It would be.”

Nico is always worried there will one day be hate in Will’s eyes, it's not that Will’s like that, it's a personal worry of Nico’s- that being “girly” is bad, that wanting to do things his sister would have done, or wanting to wear “women's” things is wrong, he’s working on it though- that's what counts. 

Will seems to realize something about the sleepover idea got Nico lost in his own head, “What type of games were you thinking? I'm sure we've got some board game in the infirmary somewhere I could go find…" 

Nico worries his bottom lip between his teeth, “I have an entire Mythomagic set, plus a few expansion packs in my bag…" 

Will chuckles at him, “That sounds like a great idea.”

Will pushes himself up with his arms and sits up before moving over to the foot of the bed to grab the grey backpack Nico had brought. Nico moves back to rest against the mass of pillows better so they can play a few rounds. 

Will passes him his bag, and Nico pulls the set out from within, it’s neatly packed into a few little boxes. He hands Will the board so he can open it up, and starts pulling little cases full of cards, and a slightly larger case full of little figurines out of his bag. 

By the time they have the board set up, it's extremely early, or extremely late depending on how you want to look at it. Birds can be heard chirping from the nearby forest, and the greyish-black sky of night has taken on the ever so slight shade of blue, the wall clock to the left of the door has it’s little hands pointed so it reads 4:42.

So yeah, maybe they didn't sleep all that well last night, maybe they were a little caught up in memories and stories they’d been told, maybe they were a little too concerned about others to sleep through the night; but isn't that just what being a demigod is about? 

Will’s got a little pink stud in his one ear, and his eyes say he’s tired, but his smile says he’s in love, he’s got a slight case of bedhead, and his skin shines in the light like honey, and his hair looks like it's been wove with little strands of gold. 

He’s wearing sweat shorts, and some old beach T-shirt from somewhere he visited in Virginia with his mom. He doesn't look perfect, or like some sort of young god sitting there, surrounded by half a Mythomagic deck and and discarded blankets. 

But he looks like home to Nico. 

Like the home he hasn't had in so long, like all the things he never thought were possible for someone like him actually have a chance to come true. 

Will is hope, and bright smiles, happy accidents that can change the course of someone's life forever, he’s sunlight shining through stained glass, and finding fireflies in the dark.

Even when Will is at his worst, he’s so easy to find hope in. 

Nico isn't the best at comforting people, or the best at expressing his emotions and what he wants to say- but he’ll go through great lengths to trample his own dark with Will’s light. 

That’s the reason for all this, sure, maybe they’ll be tired tomorrow. They’ll struggle to get out of bed, they might need help staying awake, but this “sleepover”, the game of Mythomagic and the jokes that will be shared over it are important. 

They're important because Will has spent so much time in this very room so alone, staring into the dark unable to sleep because he has to worry about if a machine goes off, and if he’ll have the talent and the power to save the person. 

So sure, maybe their sleep schedule is ruined for the next few days, but Nico wants to see Will feel better- and this is the only way he can think to make that happen. 

It’s the only way he can see to trample the dark that's filled the infirmary for so long, he wants to share the load, so Will doesn't have to bleed so much sunlight. 

So Nico does his best, to gather the dark in his hands and carry it away, so maybe one day Will won't need to bleed light to keep people happy and healthy anymore. 

Maybe someday the game that there in will give Will a break, but for now? They're going to play Mythomagic, and they're going to have fun doing it. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering if the title is after the song with American Pleasure Club featuring Chloe Moriondo, you'd be correct! 
> 
> Here's their cover of it:  
> [All The Lonely Nights In Your Life](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLHmsyofHHQ)
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr [@the-ghost-king](https://the-ghost-king.tumblr.com/)


End file.
